The Nuremberg Laws were two racial statutes passed unanimously by the Reichstag on 15 September 1935 during the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg: the Reich Citizenship Law (Reichsbürgergesetz) and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour (Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre).
The Reich Citizenship Law created a two-tier system: only persons of "German or kindred blood" could be Reichsbürger (citizens with full political rights), while Jews were reduced to Staatsangehörige (state subjects) without those rights. The Blood Protection Law banned marriages and extramarital sexual relations between Jews and citizens of German blood, prohibited Jews from employing German female household staff under the age of 45, and forbade Jews from displaying the Reich flag.
A supplementary decree on 14 November 1935 provided the regime's formal definition of who counted as a Jew, based on the number of Jewish grandparents, and introduced the category of Mischling (mixed-race) for those with partial Jewish ancestry. This pseudo-biological framework determined the application of subsequent antisemitic measures.
The laws institutionalized racial discrimination that had previously been carried out through ad hoc boycotts, dismissals (notably under the 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service), and street violence. They served as the legal scaffolding for the escalating persecution that followed: the November 1938 pogrom (Kristallnacht), forced emigration, ghettoization, and ultimately the genocide of European Jews.
The Nuremberg Laws were also extended to Roma and Black people through internal interpretive guidance. After the war, they were cited extensively by the prosecution at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (1945–46) as evidence of a systematic state policy of persecution. The laws are widely studied as a paradigmatic example of how legal formalism can be used to legitimize and operationalize racial discrimination, and they continue to inform comparative scholarship on apartheid systems and crimes against humanity.
Example
In September 1935, the Reichstag convened in Nuremberg to pass the Reich Citizenship Law and the Blood Protection Law, formally stripping German Jews of citizenship rights.
Frequently asked questions
They were passed by the Reichstag on 15 September 1935 at the Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, with a supplementary decree defining 'Jew' issued on 14 November 1935.
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